


Two Devils and a bottle of Scotch

by Eledhwen



Series: Two Devils [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Lucifer is vain, Matt is stubborn, Probably A One-Shot, Religion, not sure where this came from, what's in a name?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 12:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20340127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eledhwen/pseuds/Eledhwen
Summary: Matt turns around and stands up to face the man, trying to get a better sense of him. He smells expensive cologne, silk tie and shirt, a high-quality light woollen suit – the sort of clothes the more senior partners at Landman & Zack used to wear. Expensive clothes. Not the clothing of the type of people who would normally turn up on a Manhattan rooftop at midnight on a summer’s evening.





	Two Devils and a bottle of Scotch

**Author's Note:**

> So last year I binge-watched Daredevil, and became *ahem* marginally obsessed. Over the last few weeks I binge-watched Lucifer, and have become marginally obsessed with that show too. And what happens when I get obsessed by two shows with a devil in them? Well, apparently I have to committ a slightly cracky crossover fic.
> 
> Set in DD S2 and I guess Lucifer S1 or S2, ish ...

It’s a warm night in Manhattan. Matt is slightly sweaty under his mask, and is idly wondering about asking Melvin if there’s a material which breathes any better than whatever the composite stuff which forms his suit is made out of. He has a feeling the answer would be no, and also has a feeling that in the winter he’ll be as chilly as he is warm now.

He reaches up inside the mask and scratches his cheekbone, swinging his legs idly against the wall of the building he’s sitting on, and wonders if anything is going to happen tonight.

And then there’s what feels like an itch on his back. Matt focuses – not an itch. Someone is watching him, and now he listens, he can hear a heartbeat too. But there’s something strange about this heartbeat; it’s too slow for a normal human, unless the normal human were fast asleep and incredibly fit at the same time.

“I mean, horns, really?”

It’s a British voice, slightly scornful.

Matt turns around and stands up to face the man, trying to get a better sense of him. He smells expensive cologne, silk tie and shirt, a high-quality light woollen suit – the sort of clothes the more senior partners at Landman & Zack used to wear. Expensive clothes. Not the clothing of the type of people who would normally turn up on a Manhattan rooftop at midnight on a summer’s evening.

“It’s an image,” he says, stalling a little. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Image is _everything_,” the other man says, taking a few steps towards Matt in his designer shoes. Their leather soles are quiet on the concrete of the rooftop. “And quite honestly, this image is not one which ought to be associated with the Devil.”

Matt loosens a billy club in its holster. “I didn’t choose the name, it was given to me,” he says, feeling unaccountably defensive. “I just chose to … run with it.” He pulls himself together. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“I heard there was a chap in New York calling himself the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” the British man says, lightly. “I came to see what the fuss was about.”

Matt frowns at him.

“Personal interest,” the other man says, correctly interpreting the frown for a question. The expensive shoes take the last few steps into Matt’s space, and the whisper of silk and wool tells him there’s a hand out to shake. “Lucifer. Morningstar.”

Pulling off his glove, Matt shakes, although all his instincts are telling him this is a bad idea. The man calling himself Lucifer has a strong, cool grip and he is wearing a chunky ring with some sort of square-cut stone set in it.

“I’m sure there’s room for two of us to use the title,” he says, “especially on opposite sides of the Atlantic.”

“Los Angeles, actually,” says Lucifer Morningstar, “and no, I don’t think there is.”

Matt puts his glove back on and takes a small step back. “Like I said,” he returns, “didn’t pick it. It’s a phrase. It’s not like anyone owns it.”

“And maybe that’s where you’re wrong,” says Lucifer, voice quite calm.

Matt parses the sentence, runs it through his head, and laughs. “Sorry,” he says, still laughing, “you can’t be claiming to own the right to say you’re the Devil.”

“I _am_ the Devil,” Lucifer says, and there’s a touch of irritation now, but, Matt realises with a sudden and very sick feeling in his stomach, utter truth. The man’s heartbeat remains solid, slow, unwavering. There’s absolute veracity in his words. He’s not lying – which, Matt thinks, either means he is insane, or …

He holds up his hands, and slowly takes off the mask. “Okay,” he says, carefully. “I feel this is a conversation which we should have elsewhere.”

He takes Lucifer Morningstar back to his apartment, for want of other inspiration, and because he knows they won’t be disturbed. An offer of Scotch is accepted, and Matt changes out of the suit into sweats and a hoodie before coming back into his living room, where his guest is now lounging on the sofa. Matt takes the armchair opposite, and a drink, and says, “well. Look, I honestly didn’t choose to be known as Daredevil, or the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, or whatever it is the papers pick this week. I _chose_ to seek justice for those who can’t otherwise find it, and the nickname just stuck.”

“So you punish those who need punishing?” Lucifer asks, voice as warm as the Scotch.

“I … yeah, I guess,” Matt agrees. “Look, I hear stuff that goes on. Everything that goes on. And the cops can’t deal with all of it. So I … help them out.”

Lucifer lets out a short laugh. “It seems we have more in common than just the devilish name. Punishing people, helping the cops …” He leans forward. “It sounds like you’re copying me in more ways than one.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Matt says, now leaning more heavily towards the insanity plea. “I have no idea who you are.”

His guest sighs. “I told you, I’m the Devil. And I work with the LA police. On a strictly consultancy basis, of course.”

“Right, so you’re …”

“On vacation,” says Lucifer. “Well, I _was_ on vacation, but it turns out LA is infinitely more exciting than Hell, so I stayed.”

Matt drinks, and rubs his forehead, and decides to get to the bottom of the insanity versus Devil question sooner rather than later.

“I once asked my priest,” he says, deciding to go in at the deep end, “if he believed in the Devil. I was having a kind of crisis of faith, I guess. There was a man I was fighting who I thought was truly evil – irredeemably so.”

Lucifer is listening, intent. “What did your priest say?” he asks.

“He told me a story about his own life,” Matt says. “How he met a good man, and the man was killed by someone who was unquestionably not a good man. He said that was when he believed the Devil existed.”

“All that tale proves is that evil exists,” Lucifer counters. “Dad made humans to have free will, and with free will comes the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Trust me, I’ve seen it all. I am … well, I punish those who deserve it, but that doesn’t make _me_ inherently evil. Morally ambiguous on occasion, but, I like to think, not evil. Running Hell was a job; I didn’t particularly enjoy it, you know.”

Matt thinks that if he’d been able to, he’d have been staring about now. Lucifer’s pulse is still radiating truth.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, picking up the Scotch bottle and refilling both of their glasses, “but you’re asking me to believe that you are _the_ Lucifer? And as such, you don’t want me to go about as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen? Because it spoils your image?”

Lucifer swallows a mouthful of Matt’s best Scotch. “Exactly.” He sounds pleased. “You’re more reasonable than everyone back in LA; nobody believes a word I say. And yet I always tell the truth.”

“Yeah, you do, don’t you?” Matt sighs. “And yet, forgive me if I have a hard time believing you.”

“But you’re a believer,” Lucifer says. “You told me, you have a priest. You believe there’s a … well, that my father governs all.”

“I was mostly brought up in a convent orphanage,” Matt says. “I’ve got a pretty good memory. ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!’” he adds.

“Is that a question?” Matt can almost hear the arched eyebrow in the other man’s voice. “I rebelled. He threw me out. More pushed, than fell.”

“And yeah, that fits too,” Matt agrees. “I’m perfectly aware that there’s no one single way of interpreting the Bible. But if I can learn that, so could anyone. I know I’m not the Devil. I know damn well what I do sometimes hurts people, but also that it helps. I have faith in _something_, but I don’t know I believe that when we die we go to Heaven, or to Hell, only that we need to make our lives matter. I’m doing what I can while I have the chance. That’s what I can believe. And for now, I won’t stop doing what I do – or wearing my suit. Whoever you are.”

Lucifer picks up the whiskey and pours himself another generous measure.

“Bravo,” he says, approvingly. “Quite the speech.” He swallows the glassful, and stands up, leaning into Matt’s space. “But what do you really _want _to do, Mr Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, hmm?”

There is a tingle down Matt’s spine and his nose is filled with the expensive cologne, now overlaid by Scotch.

“Right now? I’d appreciate some sleep,” he says.

“Surely sleep isn’t your only desire?” Lucifer murmurs, right in his face.

Matt pushes him away, hard enough to make him stumble over the coffee table. “No, I’d also appreciate you leaving, Mr Morningstar,” he says, getting to his own feet.

“Why did that not work?” says Lucifer, and takes Matt’s chin in one hand. Matt tries to block the hand and get out of the grip, but the man is strong. “_Oh_,” Lucifer says, letting go after a moment. “You’re blind.”

Stepping back, Matt nods. “You only just noticed?”

“But you fight,” Lucifer says. “You fight well. I watched the videos.”

“It’s a long story,” Matt returns, not willing to go into this now. “Let’s just say I don’t need eyes to see.”

“You are fascinating!” exclaims Lucifer, sounding genuinely thrilled by his discovery. “So tell me, what happens when I do this?”

He straightens up and there is a silent pause. Matt wonders what he’s supposed to be reacting to, but then the room fills with an acrid smell of sulphur and burning which makes him choke. Reaching out a hand, he finds it grasped by his visitor and raised to Lucifer’s face.

Lucifer’s face, which is a mass of scar tissue, ridged and hard under Matt’s fingers. And then it’s not. It’s smooth, and when Matt moves his hand across the man’s cheek he runs into stubble, an aquiline nose. And the stench is gone, replaced by that cologne again.

Matt wrenches his hand away and sits down.

“My God,” he says, for want of anything better, and then the crashing enormity of what he’s just felt hits him and he reaches for the Scotch again. Lucifer’s way ahead of him and is pressing a glass into his hand.

“Have a drink,” the Devil says, kindly. “It can be a shock. My therapist didn’t talk to me for a fortnight, but then she actually saw my face rather than just feeling it.”

Matt tips the glass down his throat. “For once I guess I should be glad I can’t see the usual way,” he says. “Do you … do you really go about just telling people the truth?”

“All the time.” Lucifer sits. “My detective – my partner, I mean – she keeps telling me to stop talking in metaphors.” He sounds like he’s frowning.

“Metaphors can be a way of explaining things we can’t explain to others,” Matt muses, thinking of telling Claire about his world on fire. Something else occurs to him, and he finds himself laughing again. “My grandmother always used to say that the Murdock boys had the Devil in them,” he says.

“I think I’d have remembered,” Lucifer says, and Matt can definitely hear the leer in his voice.

“I’m pretty sure that was a metaphor too,” Matt says hastily. “She just meant that we – my dad and me – we both have a tendency to anger. To taking our anger out on others.”

Something else occurs to him, and he feels the laughter vanish. “Is my dad – is my dad in Hell?” he asks, the words sounding ridiculous in his head.

“There are millions of souls in Hell,” Lucifer says, quite calmly. “What’s his name? What’s your name, for that matter? I can’t go about thinking of you as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Matthew Murdock,” says Matt. “I’m Matthew Murdock. My father was Jack.”

“Was he a criminal?” asks Lucifer. “What makes you think he would be in Hell?”

“He … he was a boxer,” Matt explains. “He threw fights, for money. To support me, I guess. He was killed in a mob hit.”

There is silence, and then Lucifer says, “no, doesn’t ring a bell. And frankly, if he was doing that for his son, he probably went straight up to the Silver City and is having a grand old time watching his offspring hit his way through New York. Shouldn’t worry about him.”

Matt fiddles with a stray thread on the arm of his chair. “And what about me?” he asks. “What makes someone go to Hell, rather than Heaven? Who _chooses_?”

Lucifer sighs. “You choose. Humans. You make your own choices about your lives, and as a rule, that’s what determines where you end up – in the arms of my bastard of a father, or lovingly looked after by the hordes of Hell. I have no say in it. Murder’s a fairly good way of booking yourself a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. Rape. That sort of thing. Saw plenty of souls who probably guilt-tripped their way into the place, though.”

“Well,” Matt says, with a sigh, and a heavy feeling, “if that’s what happens, it happens.” He picks up the Scotch bottle and finds it’s empty. “Look,” he says, suddenly bone-weary with emotion and the weight of new knowledge that he hasn’t been praying to an emptiness all this time, but to an actual, genuine deity whose fallen son is sitting on his sofa, “like I said, I’m not losing my suit. And I doubt I’ll be able to persuade the papers to find a new nickname. So, there it is.”

“There it is,” agrees Lucifer. “I appreciate your candour, Mr Murdock. Thank you for the drink, although a self-respecting Devil of Hell’s Kitchen might consider something a little more … _aged_, perhaps.”

Matt throws the empty bottle into the bin, smiling to himself as it lands neatly in the receptacle. “I’m a defence attorney, Mr Morningstar. I don’t make enough money to buy the expensive stuff.”

Lucifer claps him on the shoulder. “Then that, I can rectify. In return for your hospitality, of course. I’m not proposing any kind of further deal.”

“Right.” Matt realises the Devil is making it clear that Matt is not in his debt, and pushes down the wave of hysteria which threatens to overcome him once more.

“Look out for a delivery,” says Lucifer, and leaves, in a rustle of wool and leather, leaving a trail of cologne behind him.

Matt’s legs give way and he sinks back down on to the armchair.

He’s just about convinced himself he dreamed up the whole evening when, two days later, there’s a knock on his door and a courier with a crate. Matt signs for the crate and takes it inside, opening it to find six bottles and a card – in Braille, even – lying on top of the straw keeping them from breaking.

“Some decent Scotch for the Devil in New York,” reads the card, “from the Devil in Los Angeles. LM.”

Matt burns the card and opens a bottle. Instantly his apartment is filled with the aroma of heather and oak. He finds a glass, pours a measure and sips, and closes his eyes in bliss.

He leaves four of the bottles in the crate and puts it away in a cupboard, before picking up the unopened one left on the table. Father Lantom will appreciate the quality of the drink, and Matt rather thinks the priest will be interested in hearing about Lucifer Morningstar.

**Author's Note:**

> Note on the Biblical stuff: I was baptised and confirmed into the Church of England but am not a church-goer, and have very little real knowledge of Catholicism or indeed the Bible. I did a bit of reading and Matt is quoting Isaiah 14:12. Apologies for any misinterpretation or anything.


End file.
